Bangkok

Six years after the devastating tsunami, there is still no early warning system in place.

On the day after Christmas six years ago, a devastating tsunami laid waste to entire coastal regions of Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Andaman Sea. More than 500 Germans were among the 230,000 victims. Even then, experts criticized the lack of a tsunami warning system in the Indian Ocean. Half a dozen years later, there is still no area-wide system in place.

On 26 December 2004 at 7:58 local time, the earth shakes 85 kilometres offshore of northwestern Sumatra at a magnitude of 9.1 – the third-strongest recorded earthquake in history. It triggers tidal waves that break over areas crowded with tourists; many holiday goers are literally caught sleeping. Thousands die. According to Seree Supratid, this could “happen again anytime” in Phuket, on Ko Phi Phi and in Khao Lak for timely warning is impossible. “There is still no alarm system,” says Supratid, who works as the director of the Energy Environmental Centre of Sirindhorn International Environmental Park in Cha-am (Phetchaburi province) in the southwest of Thailand. He is also the director of the Natural Disaster Research Centre at Rangsit University and is considered one of the country’s leading tsunami experts.

“We are not making such great progress here in Thailand,” he words carefully. So far, only fifteen percent of the national project has been completed. “Although we’ve built a lot of so-called silent towers along the coasts, which will be very important for warning the population,” reports the expert. Yet, they are practically standing about empty. In his opinion, it is not a matter of money, but of political will. After ad-hoc action taken by the government of Prime Minister Thaksin, who has since been ousted from the country, only minor measures have been taken.

“Politicians only think in two-year steps until the next election,” says Supratid. They prefer to drop by every year – like in Thailand – with financial compensation for the victims and harvest the praise than to invest in long-term prevention. A lot of cash has flowed into this short-term support, while comparatively very little has gone into the long-term safety plan. “The political gains from projects that simply require time and are not always in the media are too little,” he attempts an explanation. This is by no means a specifically Thai problem, “you are surely familiar with this in Germany, too.”

Recently, Supratid was able to record a minor success. The four-year battle for the release of more funds for the Thai tsunami early warning system succeeded a few weeks ago.

“I hope that we will be able to set up a functioning forecasting system within the next five years,” the expert states. It will cost approximately two billion baht (or 50 million euros). Yet, the problems will still be far from solved. “Actually, the people ought to abandon the affected regions – as well as those regions threatened by flooding of some rivers – but no one has the courage to tell them so,” he reveals another kettle of fish.

It does not look much better in the region’s other countries. India is pottering about with a system, as is Malaysia. Requests for collaboration are refused, sometimes with reference to military secrecy. Even the much-lauded German Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System, set up in cooperation with such institutions as the Potsdam Research Centre for Geosciences, is running far from smoothly according to Supratid. The latest mishap: in late October the people on the Mentawai Islands were exposed to a tsunami unprotected; received no warning. Hundreds perished.

“Time and again in Indonesia the buoys are stolen or defective ones are not replaced,” the expert reports. For one, the buoys are very interesting to thieves due to their stainless steel casings and the value of the inner engineering, secondly new buoys are not purchased as replacements “presumably due to the high costs of about twelve million Thai baht each” (roughly 300,000 euros). In his opinion a purely buoy-based warning system is “too unstable” anyway. For instance, the deep-sea buoys of the US government in the Indian Ocean are “far too fragile and too often out of order,” according to the head of the Natural Disaster Research Centre. Not to mention the false alarms, data losses and the distance of 1,200 kilometres from the coastline, which make reliable predictions impossible.

Supratid supports efforts by a sub-organization of the United Nations that “encourages cooperation” among the countries on the Indian Ocean and aims to convince them to set up a “joint system.” So far, though, these efforts have had no success. “At least compatibility between the regional systems must be ensured,” is the expert’s minimum requirement. Otherwise, the higher frequency of tsunami disasters such as that in 2004 expected in future is inescapable.